This year’s referendum is not the first time constitutional provisions for First Nations peoples have been proposed. What lessons can be learnt from 1967?
The 2023 Voice referendum will mark the third attempt to alter constitutional provisions for First Nations peoples. The first attempt, in 1944, was part of a proposed sweeping extension of Commonwealth powers and failed.
The second, in 1967, proposed two changes:
- to repeal Section 127, which excluded “aboriginal natives” from the “reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth”;
- to change Section 51 (xxvi), the power to make “special laws” for “the people of any race, other than the aboriginal race”, by removing the exclusion of “aboriginal race”.
These two provisions had been included in the constitution, drafted in the 1890s, because it was assumed that Aboriginal people would “die out” and hence would be of no interest to the national Parliament. A race power was required only to control the non-European “races” who had gained residence prior to Federation.
Read more about historical approaches to First Nations rights…
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.jpg "Meet 10 grads from the ASPSF Class of 2023")
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